What little population growth there is in Nebraska continues to occur in the state's largest counties, according to the latest Census figures.
Lancaster County had an estimated 324,756 people as of July 1 of last year, up 1,336 from a year earlier.
That was a better performance than Douglas County, which added only 860 people, for a population of 586,327.
Sarpy County had the most growth, going from 193,798 people on July 1, 2021, to 196,553 as of July 1 of last year, a gain of 2,755.
Together, the three counties added 4,931 people, which is more than 500 more than the state as a whole. State-level population figures were released in December.
There also was growth in the counties surrounding the state's two largest cities. All the counties that are officially part of the Lincoln or Omaha metropolitan areas added people, as did some other counties near or bordering those counties, including Saline and Otoe counties.
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David Drozd, director of research and data analytics at Community Health Development Partners in Omaha, said Nebraska's net population gain in each of the past two years has been about half the typical annual gain during the 2010s, and a big reason for the anemic growth is people moving out of the state.
For example, Drozd said Lancaster County had positive domestic in-migration every year during the 2010s (meaning more people moved into the county from out of state than moved to another state) but has had net total domestic outmigration of about 1,000 people over the past two years.
Douglas County averaged a small amount of annual outmigration during the 2010s — about 250 people a year — but that number has ballooned to 3,700 a year over the past two years, he said.
Drozd said there also have been weak migration numbers for almost all of Nebraska's midsized cities, and he noted that Adams, Dakota, Dawson, Hall, Lincoln, Madison, Platte and Scotts Bluff counties all have seen domestic outmigration.
One reason for that is current unemployment rates, he said.
Nebraska's unemployment rate has been at a historically low level of around 2% for several months now, but Drozd noted that the national rate is also historically low at about 3.5%. By contrast, there was a much larger gap between the state and local rates in the years after the Great Recession, which worked in Nebraska's favor.
"The unemployment rate gap and our net migration levels have been highly correlated over time," he said.
A report released recently by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City backs up Drozd's assertions.
The report, titled "Population Growth Needed to Address Labor Scarcity," examines the state's lack of population growth and how it contributes to labor shortages.
It noted that Nebraska's trend of losing people to other states was exacerbated by the pandemic, with the number of states with a net population gain from Nebraska growing from fewer than 25 on average before the pandemic to more than 30 after it started.
The report shows Nebraskans moving south and west during the pandemic. For example, from 2015-2019, an average of 1,670 people moved from Kansas to Nebraska every year, but in 2020 and 2021, that switched the other direction, with 1,336 Nebraskans moving to Kansas each year. Before the pandemic, Nebraska had a net gain of about 970 people a year from Texas. But in 2020 and 2021, a net 3,800 Nebraskans moved to Texas each year.
Other states where there was a sharp trend reversal from people moving to Nebraska to Nebraskans moving to those states include Wyoming, Utah, Montana and Idaho.
The Fed study also found that Nebraska is seeing a net outmigration of all age groups since the pandemic. Before 2020, it had been losing people ages 19-34 and those 55 and older but had been gaining people 18 and younger and those 35-54.
The good news for Lancaster County is that it has continued to see a net gain in both international and domestic migration, even though those numbers have been smaller since the start of the pandemic. The county also continues to see net migration from other areas of Nebraska, including an increase in people moving from Douglas County, according to the Fed study.
Another observation of the Fed study is that Nebraska also is seeing fewer foreign immigrants. It noted that immigration to the state and the nation started to decline in 2017, which is the year Donald Trump became president and instituted stricter immigration policies.
That decline deepened during the pandemic, with 2020 seeing the fewest number of foreign immigrants for at least the past 30 years, according to the study.
"Had Nebraska continued to add residents from abroad at the same rate prior to 2015, population in the state may have increased by an additional 19,000 individuals by 2022," the report said.
The one thing that is keeping the state growing is natural change, meaning there are more births than deaths each year, but even that trend is changing.
"Births have been trending down and deaths up, so our natural changes levels aren’t as good," Drozd said. "Statewide, the net gain here has been about 5,000 the last two years, about half the typical annual gain in the 2010s."
And as with overall population, the three largest counties are producing all of Nebraska's net natural gain.
In 2022, Nebraska had 5,105 more births than deaths overall, which was about 4,400 less than the combined net births in Douglas, Lancaster and Sarpy counties.
Most Nebraska counties with a four-year college or university saw strong population growth in 2022, mirroring a national trend.